Maureen Alsop is the author of two full collections of poetry, Apparition Wren (Main Street Rag, 2007) and The Diction of Moths (Ghost Road Press, pending). She is also the author of several chapbooks, most recently Luminal Equation in the collection Narwhal (Cannibal Press, 2009) and the dream and the dream you spoke (Spire Press, pending). She is the winner of Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry and The Bitter Oleander’s Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals including Blackbird, Tampa Review, New Delta Review, Typo and AGNI. Visit her at: www.apparitionwren.com.

“My favorite model of the best use of a front porch was visiting with my octogenarian father-in-law in Australia who, at 5pm every night, would drink a Victorian Bitter in the front yard as a group of his mates would wander over to chat. This twenty-year habit seems a good ritual for saying goodbye to the day’s work and sharing in a cleansing communal libation!”